"We think customers understand that it isn't made from avocado," said Claire Regan, Kraft Foods' vice president of corporate affairs.

Way to go, there, Claire, setting high standards for your company. "We think customers understand that none of our food actually is what it purports to be." Maybe that explains Velveeta.

The linked article reminds us that guacamole is a popular dish on Super Bowl Sunday, so when you're out shopping for your party, make sure you get real guacamole and not avocado-flavored soybean and coconut oils.

Pre-emptive snarky comment: "Oh, right, just like the advertisements for Windows Vista, which said that The Wow Starts Now. I didn't feel any Wow."

Don’t get me started. I’ve seen one with 0.7% avocado (the rest was peas and blue food colouring). Here in the UK you can’t even get fresh guacamole in "Mexican" restaurants. I wonder how many people have decided that they don’t like guacamole having only ever tried some dubious green goo.

[quote]It’s all about the Trader Joe’s guacamole kits. (A small plastic tub containing two avocados, a tomato, a shallot, a jalapeno, a clove of garlic, and a lime.)[/quote]

ITYM a [b]head[/b] of garlic. Yummmm… Cilantro is optional.

Not sure whether this thing takes BBCode or HTML (the Help says BBCode, but it also says there are Reply and Quote buttons, but there aren’t), and there’s no Preview button, so if the quoting is messed up, don’t blame me.

In my area, a certain brand of lemonade used to advertise 3% juice. Then it dropped to 2%. Now it’s at 0%. Zero! It really needs to be called "sort of tastes like lemonade drink", but I doubt it’d sell as well with that name.

I’m curious: how did you find this article just recently? Or did you? I know (think) you have blog posts queued up; but that article was dated from Nov2006 – over a year ago. Are you really that far ahead on your writing, that far behind on your news reading, or did some random chain of searches/sites bring you there (like how I arrived at your blog and now the article too)? Anyway, appreciate the info; I’ll definitely be on my guard this Sunday.

1) due to the similarity of the lowercase ‘g’ and ‘q’ letters when they’re underlined in a hyperlink, I wasn’t sure if the Kraft product was called ‘guacamole’ or ‘quacamole’ (as in a trademark of the Kraft corporation, like ‘Velveeta’). Since it wasn’t a ‘q’, I’ll offer my idea to Kraft free of charge – call this gunk "Quacamole!" and indicate that it’s an avocado-flavored dip. Market the hell out of it. Everyone’s happy Problem solved.

2) Kraft apparently has some incredible food sciences engineering staff if they can make people happy eating something that looks like guacamole but is really whipped partially hydrogenated soybean and coconut oils, corn syrup, whey, and food starch. My hat’s off to them.

Now if they can only get the Crunch Enhancer perfected (it’s a non-nutritive cereal varnish. It’s semi-permeable. It’s not osmotic. What it does is it coats and seals the flake, prevents the milk from penetrating it).

Al Sicherman is a retired columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. He writes a "food" column" — the scare quotes are because it’s basically a humour column involving food.

He released a cookbook a while back called "Caramel Knowledge" (actually "Caramel Knowledge: Bostess Bupcakes Peanut-Butter Coffee, Herring in a Cloud, Wienie Zucchini, and More Food and Culinary Musings for the Twisted Mind"), compiling his "theme dinner" recipies from many columns (and dinner parties). One was the "Mock Dinner", inspired by Mock Turtle Soup and Mock Apple Pie. As an appetiser, he offered "Mockaguole", a mock-guacamole dip. It was made mostly of softened butter. It went over quite well.

Hey, I didn’t say it was a great idea, just free; I guess that Kraft probably won’t be giving me a call. But now that you mention it, a duck-flavored dip might be just the thing for Sunday’s Super Bowl party.

I love how the ingredient list says there is 0g trans fat, but the second ingredient is.. well.. trans fat. Thanks to the concept of "per serving" and a couple of thresholds, they can get away with this.

In New Zealand, a company called Watties (brought by Heinz) recently released a guacamole that is located in the freezer section of the supermarket. The idea of buying frozen guacamole and thaw them before dipping them just doesn’t sit right with me. I shall buy one and see what percentage of avocados it had!

Could be worse. The Subway near my work recently had a "chicken and avocado" sub. I tried one and discovered that the purported avocado was in fact just some green goo that was served with a scoop. Don’t know what percentage of it was avocado but it certainly gave the impression of being around 2%.

Disclaimer: I ran no scientific tests to prove the percentage of avocado in said green goo. For all I know it may be 100% pure avocado that Subway serve mushed up because they think it’s more appealing to their customers that way.

Hehe, it’s funny what they write on different products these days. My wife has some sort of lotion or hairspray or something (I don’t know what that stuff is) and on the bottle it says: "Against animal testing". However, nowhere on the bottle does it say anything like "Not tested on animals". To me that sounds like the same sort of loophole as "(tastes like) 100% PURE JUICE".

I don’t think I’ve tried the Subway version of fake guacamole, but I have risked it at Taco Bell. Surprisingly, it was decent. Not as good as homemade, but quite good for fast food. And sure enough, avocado is the main ingredient, with no oils listed as filler.

There is nothing like the real thing. I live in the heart of the Avocado growing region and after coding all week I get to help a friend harvest his grove. That way I get to have all of the avocadoes I want and that keeps my wife from buying Kraft.

I usually mash up 4 to 6 avocadoes and mix in some salsa. Leaving an avocado pit in the guacamole keeps it fresh longer.

If you have a firm avocado and you want to ripen it quick putting it in a plastic bag with a ripe bananna at room temperature does the trick.